If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Layer upon layer
She finds deep in her own experience the central truths of the art of living, which are paradoxical only on the surface: that the more truly solitary we are, the more compassionate we can be; the more we let go of what we love, the more present our love becomes; the clearer our insight into what is beyond good and evil, the more we can embody the good. Until finally she is able to say, in all humility, "I am the Tao, the Truth, the Life." S. Mitchell
Translation of the Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell, Harper & Row, 1988. In keeping with copyright law only the chapter under study is fulltext. All other chapters show only the first stanza.
Study Group Contac: Lissa Lord:lissalord@gmail.com
Tao in WordLayers
Layer upon layer
A translation by John Bright-Fey, expresses the thought that Master opens people's minds by emptying what they thought they knew and desired. Now there is room for our intuition and meditation. The foundation for learning is personal experience of an open heart and strong bodymind which develops as we loose how the world tells us to live and think. Our cores fill with the emptiness of meditation which, paradoxically, is rich and full. For the artist, creativity can only come from the uncreated, the empty. There is energy here: in the empty before creativity. When creativity is released, stand back and "practice not-doing" . . . get out of its way.
ReplyDeleteHey Kristin! welcome. I turned to the back of Mitchell's Tao and found a note for chapter 2 on page 87. "acts without doing anything: Her actions are appropriate responses. Thus they are effortless. ... She never has to make a decision; decisions arise by themselves. She is like an actress who loves her role. The Tao is writing the script." You know when we have decisions to make and don't know which way to go? All we need do is "go" and we'll be walking in the decision. Life continues to move forward no matter where we think it should go. Through meditation (emptying our minds) the master has filled our cores and we need not fear moving forward, effortlessly because our action is appropriate.
ReplyDelete